Mashable

The head of Samsung apparently agrees with the online criticisms regarding the company's "Apple clones."

According to a new report from Korean news outlet Ajunews, Samsung's executive chairman Lee Jae-yong was unhappy with Samsung's mobile division, Samsung MX (Mobile eXperience), due to reactions on social media and in tech news outlets regarding the designs of Samsung's newest products.

Samsung's chairman reportedly demanded the division "reeexamine its plans" following online criticism that the designs of the company's newest devices look like Apple copies.

“The chairman (Lee) himself stepped in after the controversy over Apple's design plagiarism and quality issues surrounding the Buds 3 series and Galaxy Watch 7 released last month," an insider reportedly told the outlet. "The internal atmosphere is currently very bad.”

The report goes on to say that unspecific actions were taken against the head of Samsung MX as well as other employees in the company's mobile division.

Samsung was hit with a wave of criticism last month following its big annual Galaxy Unpacked event. Alongside its newest smartphones, the consumer electronics giant also announced two new products: the Galaxy Watch Ultra smartwatch and its new line of earbuds, the Galaxy Buds 3 series.

However, the celebratory Galaxy Unpacked event quickly turned negative online as smartphone reviewers, tech commentators, and even Samsung fans noted the uninspired Apple-like designs of the smartwatch and earbuds.

"Today was a huge L for Samsung," said Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs, a popular tech review channel on YouTube. "Watch Ultra is the most shameless copy of an Apple product in ages — and it’s hideous."

"To see Samsung just release a bunch of Apple clones is disheartening," Apple Insider's Andrew O'Hara said following the event. "It’s boring and a massive fail compared to where Samsung used to be."

According to the Ajunews report, these criticisms were even heard among reporters who attended a media briefing held at the company's flagship Samsung Store in Seoul. Reporters that attended "constantly talked about Samsung's new devices looking exactly the same as Apple's" according to the report.

Recently published reviews of Samsung's newest products also can't help but mention the Apple-like design.

"Samsung built an Apple Watch Ultra of its own" reads the headline of Bloomberg's review. 

The Verge went with "If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em" for its own Galaxy Watch Ultra review, while noting how "disappointing" it was to see Samsung copy Apple in this way.

It's very likely that the next iteration of Samsung's Galaxy Ultra  smartwatch and wireless earbuds will look very different from the Apple clones that are out now. But, until then, Samsung is stuck with hearing the accusations that they copied one of their biggest competitors.

The start of August hasn't been great for Jimmy Donaldson a.k.a., MrBeast, as several participants from his upcoming Amazon MGM studios game show Beast Games, have accused the YouTube star of unsafe, borderline negligent filming conditions.

In a striking report from The New York Times, several contestants spoke with the outlet about the severe mismanagement of the show's production. These allegations include statements about the lack of food provided, inadequate medical care, and physical injuries contestants suffered competing in tasks for the show.

The first round of filming of the reality show took place at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas where close to 2,000 participants gathered to compete for a grand prize of $5 million. Contestants ate, slept, and generally lived in the stadium during filming and had to give up their food, clothes, and — oddly — medication to staff.

Meals were described as tiny, with staff serving cold oatmeal, raw veggies, and a hard-boiled egg to participants. The only other type of food contestants were given was MrBeast-branded Feastable chocolate bars. Medicine that was handed over to staff was hard to get back promptly, with one participant claiming to have gone days without needed insulin. When another contestant told staff they needed to eat with their medication, they claimed that staff members were dismissive and reluctantly gave them "half a banana."

Several of the complaints given to the New York Times included sleep deprivation due to having to film at night, and having to sleep on the turf of the sun-soaked Las Vegas stadium during the day. Women who competed during the event also alleged sexism that caused some not to get underwear while menstruating because menstruation was said to be "not a medical emergency."

It was made clear during the report that anonymous contestants felt that the production team was not adequately prepared for the number of participants included in the event. In fact, from the start, several felt misled as many were told the initial number of contestants would be near 1,000. But according to an introductory video by Donaldson, the YouTube star claimed to have always intended to have 2,000 and then cut it down to half for the actual show.

"The MrBeast promotional video shoot, which included over 2,000 participants, was unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather, and other unexpected logistical and communications issues, which we are currently reviewing," said a MrBeast representative to the New York Times. "But we are grateful that virtually all of those invited to Toronto for our next production have enthusiastically accepted our invitation."

Mashable reached out to representatives for MrBeast and will update if we hear back.

Generative AI is in a bit of a hype bubble in the tech industry right now. As such, new and potentially interesting AI tools are regularly popping up, inviting everyday users to try out the latest new AI software.

However, just because AI is big right now, doesn't mean every AI tool that users come across is legitimate. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Bad actors regularly look to take advantage of whatever is popular at the moment. And the current AI trend makes potential AI consumers particularly vulnerable to hackers and scammers. 

Case in point, a new report from Trend Micro has found that bad actors are utilizing a tried and true method of weaponizing Facebook ads to lure AI users into downloading malware disguised as AI photo editing tools.

Mashable has previously reported on how online criminals utilize hacked Facebook pages in order to scam victims. 

Scammers have used these Facebook ads to advertise products that they never send to buyers. Hackers have rebranded stolen Facebook pages to look like official accounts from companies like Google and even Facebook parent company Meta itself in order to trick users into downloading malware.

Bad actors are now updating this strategy and posing as AI image-editing tools to spread malware.

According to the Trend Micro report, scammers are tricking page owners into handing over their login credentials through basic phishing campaigns. Once the scammers have access to an already established account, they rebrand the Facebook Page as an AI photo editing tool. In the case analyzed by Trend Micro, the scammers posed as Evoto, a real AI photo editing tool.

After rebranding the stolen pages as Evoto, the scammers then began running paid Facebook ads through those pages, sending users to a fake website where users could supposedly download the AI photo editing tool. Of course, the target isn't downloading AI software. In this case, the unaware victim is downloading endpoint management software which gives the attacker remote access to their device. From there, the hacker can steal the user's login credentials as well as other sensitive data.

Social media users should proceed with caution when it comes to any unknown downloadable software being promoted via advertisements on a platform. They could very well be malware in disguise.

Game Informer magazine, the gaming magazine with a publishing history spanning more than three decades, has evidently been shut down by its parent company, the brick-and-mortar video game chain and meme stock GameStop.

"After 33 thrilling years of bringing you the latest news, reviews, and insights from the ever-evolving world of gaming, it is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Game Informer," reads a statement posted on Game Informer's website and X account on Friday.

"While our presses may stop, the passion for gaming that we've cultivated together will continue to live on," the statement continued.

However, along with the end of the longest running U.S. gaming print magazine, another aspect of Game Informer that won't live on is the video game publication's entire digital archive. The GameInformer.com domain name now forwards to a landing page which only displays the shut down announcement. All of the Game Informer website's internal links now also forward to the same page meaning previously published news articles, reviews, and other content can no longer be viewed.

According to ex-Game Informer content director Kyle Hilliard, the magazine was more than halfway done with its next issue when it received the news that its parent company was shutting it down.

"Game Informer has been closed down by GameStop and the entire, incredibly talented staff (including myself) have all been laid off," Hilliard posted on X on Friday.

The sudden decision to kill off the gaming magazine, which GameStop acquired in 2000, clearly caught Game Informer's employees off guard. As a result, employees likely did not have a chance to archive their own work before the company took the content on its website offline.

Unfortunately, the shutdown and removal of online archives is becoming all too common in the digital media industry as a whole, resulting in content being lost to time. Most recently, Paramount decided to take down the MTV News website along with its digital archives more than a year after the news organization shut down. Reporters as well as fans of the organization lamented the loss of years of interviews and other MTV news-related content. And while the Internet Archive likely has a good amount of Game Informer's content archived, Internet Archive documents are typically incomplete snapshots of the originals, with altered formatting and missing elements.

GameStop has struggled in recent years to keep up with the change within the video game industry from physical to digital media. While the meme stock craze in 2021 helped keep it afloat, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen recently called for "extreme frugality" as its troubles continue.

Mashable reached out to GameStop for confirmation that the archive is gone, and to ask if there were plans to make it available at any point. We will update if we hear back.